Traditional medicine moved from the margins to the resilience debate in Berlin
The conversation around traditional medicine took on a more formal place at the World Health Summit 2026 in Berlin, where a dedicated session revisited what this field can contribute to stronger, more resilient health systems. It was the third such event at the summit since 2025, a sign that the discussion is no longer being treated as a side conversation about heritage alone. Health leaders, Indigenous advocates and researchers framed the topic through a familiar but difficult question: how do health systems absorb diverse forms of knowledge without weakening scientific rigor, patient safety or accountability?
The answer running through the session was not romanticism. It was governance.
Evidence, safety and regulation sat at the center of the discussion
Dr Mustapha Ferjani, Tunisia’s Minister of Health, opened with a forceful political message about integrating traditional medicine into wider health systems to build care that is resilient, fit for purpose and accessible to all. His remarks placed equal weight on respect for traditional knowledge and on the disciplines that modern health systems cannot avoid: scientific evaluation, quality assurance and patient safety. He also linked the discussion to biodiversity protection, One Health approaches, digital health transformation and the responsible use of artificial intelligence.
That combination matters because traditional medicine does not exist in a policy vacuum. Once a therapy, practitioner or knowledge system enters public health structures, questions of standardization, oversight, referral pathways and digital documentation follow immediately. Without those safeguards, integration can drift into inconsistency; with them, traditional medicine can be assessed, monitored and linked to population health goals in a more credible way.
Resilience was defined as a system property, not a slogan
Dr Shyama Kuruvilla, director ad interim of the WHO Global Centre for Traditional Medicine, widened the frame by describing resilience as the capacity of people, communities, systems and the environment to attain, restore and sustain balance. Her remarks moved the debate beyond hospitals and clinics. In that view, health system resilience depends not only on workforce numbers or supply chains, but also on trust, equity, sustainability and the ability of institutions to work with knowledge sources that communities already use.
She pointed to WHO’s emerging Living Well initiative as a platform for linking traditional knowledge, science, innovation and international cooperation. The policy logic is straightforward. If communities already rely on traditional approaches for health maintenance, then ignoring those systems leaves a gap between formal services and lived reality. If governments engage them without evidence, safety or equity, the result can be confusion and uneven care. The session repeatedly returned to the need for country-led, evidence-informed models that keep those risks visible rather than hidden.
Indigenous health leadership brought culture and rights into the clinical frame
Vivian Camacho, an Indigenous health leader from Bolivia, anchored the discussion in the relationship between health, human rights, cultural identity and harmony with nature. Drawing on the Indigenous concept of Sumaq Kawsay, or living well, she described Bolivia’s experience recognizing traditional healers and integrating ancestral medicine into the national health system. Her example from the COVID-19 pandemic was especially telling: Indigenous-led responses combined public health messaging with traditional healing practices to support the health of mind, body and spirit.
The bedside relevance is easy to miss if the discussion stays at the level of policy slogans. In many communities, trust determines whether prevention messages are heard, whether patients present early, and whether referral systems function at all. Cultural legitimacy is not cosmetic; it can shape health-seeking behavior, adherence and the willingness to engage with formal services. When systems acknowledge that reality, they may gain access to populations that otherwise remain outside routine care pathways.
Primary health care systems were the most practical test case
Dr Sohel Saikat, WHO senior adviser on primary health care, made the argument in operational terms. Traditional medicine, he said, can strengthen essential public health functions by extending the reach of services through trust, cultural legitimacy and community engagement. He pointed to roles in health promotion, prevention, risk communication, early detection and referral, then called for formal two-way referral and learning systems between traditional practitioners and primary health care providers.
A single sentence captures the practical stakes: referral without structure is not integration.
Once traditional practitioners are asked to help detect illness earlier or steer patients toward biomedical care, the system must also know how that referral happens, how information is exchanged and how safety is preserved. The same logic applies in reverse, where primary care teams need pathways to learn from traditional practitioners without blurring scope of practice or abandoning standards of care. In a health system under pressure, those interfaces can determine whether community-level contact becomes a source of prevention or a missed opportunity.
Research needs to match the influence traditional practitioners already hold
Amie Steel of Southern Cross University brought the evidence conversation back to research design. She described growing evidence that traditional medicine practitioners already support preventive health through behavior change, health literacy and healthy lifestyles, and characterized them as an under-recognized public health resource. Her point was not that this contribution is hypothetical. It is that the research ecosystem has not kept pace with the role these practitioners already play.
She called for stronger evidence, greater investment and more inclusive research structures that bring together researchers, practitioners, traditional knowledge holders, Indigenous healers and communities as equal partners. That model is especially relevant when policy makers are trying to decide which practices deserve support, how to regulate them and how to measure whether they improve outcomes without causing harm. In that sense, the scientific question is inseparable from the governance question. Evidence generated without community trust may fail to translate; community trust without evidence may fail to protect patients.
The Berlin session ended with a clear policy demand
By the end of the session, the message was consistent across speakers: resilient health systems depend on more than services and technology. They also depend on trust, culture, community participation and respect for diverse knowledge systems. Traditional medicine was presented as a meaningful contributor to prevention, primary care, mental well-being and community resilience, but only when supported by robust evidence, regulation and collaboration across sectors.
The final call was for a shift from recognizing traditional medicine as valuable in principle to integrating it fully within national health-care systems. That will require stronger evidence, innovation, protection of Indigenous knowledge, equity and partnerships between traditional, public health and biomedical systems. The unresolved challenge is practical rather than philosophical: countries must decide how to build those links without diluting standards or allowing cultural inclusion to outrun patient safety. The summit made clear that the policy work is only beginning.